“I didn’t ask,” Cardenal said, his tone reproving. “When I told him you were a detective, he became quite angry, wanting to know who hired you to stalk him. So you can see why I want to know your real business. Did you come to this church last week looking for him?”
“I didn’t think paranoia was an infectious condition, but you seem to have caught it from him. I have no interest in Jerry Fugher. My business down here is just that: my business. My cousin, remember? Stella Guzzo slandered him all over Chicago. Which brings me to a question for you: Did she give you this infamous diary for safekeeping?”
“If she did, that would not be any business of yours.”
“Have you seen this diary?” I said, impatient. “I’d like to know if it looks convincingly like a twenty-five-year-old document.”
“What does that mean?”
“A forensic expert would have to test the age of the paper, but there are a few simple things. Like, if it’s in a ‘Princess Fiona’ book, it’s definitely a forgery.”
A teacher came over to claim Cardenal’s attention: a fight had broken out behind the stands between a couple of boys from St. Eloy’s and a group from St. Jerome’s. I stopped at the home plate fence for a last look at the field. St. Eloy’s was still batting with one on and two out. Frankie was on deck. The batter ahead of him dribbled a ball back toward the mound, which should have been a routine out, but this was high school; the pitcher bobbled the throw and both runners were safe.
Frankie stepped up to the plate and the St. Eloy students and parents came to life, shrieking, stomping, yelling encouragement. The loudest cheers came from a heavy woman in the front row wearing a St. Eloy’s cap and warm-up jacket.
She screamed at me to get out of the way. “Do you own this ballpark? No one can see over your fat head.”
I backed away to the side of the stands. Frankie took strike one and a collective groan rose from the spectators.
The woman kept yelling. “Keep steady, Frankie, make him throw your pitch, he doesn’t have an arm, he has an old sock sewn to his shoulder.”
The women on either side of her were laughing and encouraging her. “You tell him, Betty! Frankie, listen to your ma, get us a hit!”
Betty Pokorny? I gaped at her. She’d put on thirty or forty pounds since high school, but it was her face that had changed. When I’d known her, she’d had soft round cheeks framed by light brown curls. Somewhere along the way she’d started bleaching her hair until now it hung in pale ropes to her shoulders. She had deep grooves along her mouth and in her forehead. Too much worry, too many cigarettes, maybe a few too many beers, too.
Frankie popped up while I was staring at her. One of her neighbors nudged her and pointed at me.
“What are you looking at?” she called. “You think your boy can outhit my boy?”
I shook my head, held up my hands, universal sign of peace, I don’t want any trouble, but the two women next to her were egging her on. Don’t let a St. Jerome’s mother dis your boy, and so on.
Betty started to her feet, fists clenched.
I went over to her. “Betty: it’s V. I. Warshawski. I stopped to watch Frankie—he’s an amazing—”
She slapped me before I could finish the sentence. “You?” she screeched. “I knew it, knew you’d never forgive me for stealing Big Frank from you. You’ve been up there on the North Side all these years, plotting—”
“No!” I roared.
She stopped shouting, but stood clenching and unclenching her fingers. Her two friends eyed her uneasily. They liked a shouting match but not a fight.
Other parents began yelling at us to shut up: “We didn’t come to watch two old broads fight.” “We’re here to watch our boys.” “Shut up!” “Get out of the way.”
I took Betty’s arm and hustled her away from the stands, to the back where Father Cardenal was dealing with the remnants of the fight he’d been summoned to break up.
BRUSH BACK
“You never did forgive me for stealing Frank,” Betty repeated, but uncertainly, as if she didn’t really believe it.
“You two broke my heart,” I agreed, “but it mended. I only stopped here today to see your son play. Frank told me he thought he might go all the way and—”
“So you have been sneaking around with Frank behind my back!”
It was the tiredness in her face that kept me from losing my temper, the heavy lines that I’d seen on the faces of my classmates’ mothers when I was growing up. She wouldn’t have wanted my pity, but poverty is an unrelenting taskmaster.
“Didn’t Frank tell you? He hired me to try to help Stella with her exoneration claim. Which only led to her slandering Boom-Boom, and then slapping me with a restraining order. We have been having fun without you, I suppose.”